Archive for December 2011

I caught this pair of leaves in a warm embrace the other morning on one of the doggie walks. They were so cute I couldn’t resist taking their photo. When I processed the photo I gave it a soft look to demonstrate the depth of their love. Happy New Year!

Still learning various conversions techniques on what goes into the camera and what comes out of the printer. I shot a series of the ominous Christmas eve sky. I was basically exposing for the light parts of the sky and letting everything else go where it wanted to. Resulting in the image at the bottom.

Since most of my photographs are taken while one hand is holding a dog leash the idea of using a tripod and making several different exposures of each subject doesn’t work for me. The idea of using one image, making several different copies at different exposure values and making an HDR image was something I really wanted to try.

I ran the Rw2 raw file through Sklypix Developer Studio to convert it to a tiff file without making any corrections to the image. I then brought the image into Photoshop CS2 and made 2 other exposures, one, using levels, the darkest areas of the foreground were lightened and one where the entire image was lightened, saving each one as a separate tiff file, again making no other adjustments. I then brought those two images, plus the original into Photomatrix for an HDR conveersion. I made the lightest image #1, the one where I lightened the entire image #2 and the original #3. These were processed with a 1 2/3 stop conversion. Using tone mapping I did some adjustments and saved it as a tone mapped tiff. Using Virtual Photographer, a Photoshop plug-in I made a few more adjustments and saved it again as a different named tiff. I added the border from Photo Tools Frame, another Photoshop plug-in. ran Unsharp Mask and saved it as another tiff, including the layers under another different name. I took that file, reduced the resolution to 100 and the size to 4.5 x 6″ added the copyright info and saved it as a flattened jpg. The above is the resulting image, which is very close to what my eye saw that Christmas evening.

I spent some time this evening playing with Picasa 3 to convert this color raw file to a black and white jpg. I then brought it into Photoshop CS2 and made an adjustment layer for the sky and another one for the rest of the photo. then using curves and levels plus the eraser tool to make the image. This is quite a learning experience for an old guy, but I am beginning to see how it relates to the dodging and burning I used to do in the darkroom. One of my new year resolutions is to do a lot more black & white. I purchase the 3 volume ebook “The Magic of Black & White” from Craft & Vision http://www.craftandvision.com/books/. They are well worth the $5.00 cost per volume.

This is one of the shots I took Christmas morning as the dogs and I greeted the day. I really liked the way the sun bathed the snow covered road with the golden hue of morning as it led to he cottages down the hill towards the lake. For some reason the phrase “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go” came to mind. And the thought that we all go home for Christmas, if only in our dreams.

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus we want to take time out to wish all our followers and friends a very Merry Christmas and the hope for a Wonderful New Year. May 2012 bring you the hopes and dreams that are foremost in your mind.

Just finished reading a great web page entitled “Finding Photographic Beauty in Leaves (With 16 Gorgeous Examples)”
By Tom Dinning at http://www.lightstalking.com/photograph-leaves. It inspired me to go back and take another look at some past leaf shots. This one was shot one morning after Flan and I got back from our walk and when I put her back in her pen I saw this leaf floating on her water dish. You never know where you might find an interesting shot.

Photographer Jerry Downs has written a new e-book entitled “The Present” with over 300 images and a tale of personal self-discovery set in the American West. It is a free download at http://www.thepresentis.it/. It’s well worth the download!